Chris Puplava's Blog

Mar 4 – New home sales are down double-digits from last year’s level as a 30-year fixed rate mortgages have surged from under 3% to nearly 5%. Unless mortgage rates move materially lower soon, the slowdown in housing is...

Jan 21 – Current money flows are reflecting a reactionary positioning to higher inflation and higher interest rates with dramatic moves seen across the ETF space. Also, as shown below, money is coming out of very large, passive ETFs and going into...

Jan 4 – While economic growth is likely to remain positive in 2022, we are seeing a large withdrawal in market liquidity coming from several sources: Fed QE is ending, REPO facility is exploding to nearly $2T, and the US Treasury will be...

Nov 16 – US and global growth is slowing after a strong initial recovery. We have the fiscal cliff ahead of us as well as the Fed's planned tapering of its QE purchases. Growth will likely slow well into the first half of 2022 and with it some moderation...

Oct 1 – The dramatic shift away from “dirty energy” to “green energy” has seen large investor capital shift away from resource companies that dominated in the early 2000s towards the FAANG stocks over the last decade. This shift in capital coupled with falling commodity prices

Sep 22 – Over the last three months, Microsoft drove a whopping 16.8% of the S&P 500’s return and Apple 14.6%. Literally, just two of the 500 stocks in the S&P 500 drove nearly one third of the entire index’s return! Throw in the next top two...

Jul 16 – While off to a fast start in the first quarter, the reflation trade has taken a blow that puts its longevity into question. In simplistic terms, reflation characterizes an upswing in economic growth which sees both growth and inflation accelerate...

Apr 15 – The U.S. consumer is now equipped with record savings and has been confined to spending mostly on goods versus services. For example, personal consumption on goods has not only eclipsed its prior highs...

Jan 28 – The COVID-induced recession and political regime change from President Trump to President Biden are two forces that have broken trends in place for over a decade. Since the bottom of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, the S&P 500’s total return...

Oct 19 – Such an epic hit to our economy has been met with an even larger amount of stimulus, and the word “epic” does not do it justice. How do you respond to a $2.2 trillion hit to the economy? With more than $5 trillion in stimulus! Up to now...